March 2015 | Dr. Bakhtiar Moazzami
The report finds that variations in “human capital” and “economic agglomeration” are driving income disparity between the rural and urban areas in our region. Explained in simple terms “human capital” is the level of educational attainment by people living in your community and “economic agglomeration” is related to the number of people living in your community but working in a larger centre.
The report observes that in Northeastern Ontario there is much greater connectivity of rural areas to larger centres than in Northwestern Ontario. This difference likely contributes to many of the significant variances that were found between the two regions including: lower average earnings, higher rural unemployment, and lower educational attainment among the aboriginal population.